I’ll begin by saying my Three Hopes prediction was wrong. And that’s fine!
Onto the main topic: I recently finished God Eater 2 Rage Burst and I wanted to make a few comments on the role of protagonists. If you look at my shrine to Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll see I made fun of the fact that Aloy does bloody everything for everyone single-handedly. It’s something I see a lot in games and it came up again in God Eater. Spoilers ahead for God Eater. In God Eater Resurrection, you play as a guy canonically named Yuu Kannagi. Now while Yuu’s the main character, the game doesn’t really revolve around him. In fact, he becomes Captain of the First Unit precisely because he’s nothing special – Johannes appointed him to the position because Johannes felt he, as a rather unassuming and unimportant person, would be easier to control compared to, say, Sakuya, who one would expect to become Captain since she’s the Vice Captain. The first story arc involves Johannes secretly nurturing Nova in Aegis to initiate the Devouring Apocalypse. Yuu has nothing to do with figuring this out – it’s all Sakuya and Alisa. On the opposing side, we have Soma and his relationship with his father, coupled with his inner turmoil at being part Aragami and possibly causing his mother’s death. He bonds with Shio, ironically finding his humanity through an Aragami. Yuu has nothing to do with this either. In the second story arc, Yuu is instrumental to saving Lindow – through a fluke. Yes, he happened to be the only God Eater in the Den when it’s attacked because he was previously injured. He is therefore the only one in a position to fight the Aragami and he picks up Lindow’s God Arc, an action that should have killed him, but he was lucky in that he happened to be (at least somewhat) compatible with it. Since one must use Lindow’s God Arc to fight Lindow after his Aragami corruption, Yuu ends up being necessary. But as you can see, these are all flukes and coincidences. In the third story arc, Yuu is straight-up just another member of the team. The game drives home the point that the entire Far East unites to take down the Arius Nova. Yuu’s no different from anyone else. And that’s the point of this – I like that approach to protagonists. I want to feel like I’m in the world interacting with my equals. It helps with immersion. Let’s look at the sequel, in which you play a guy canonically named Hiro Kamui. Rage Burst takes the exact opposite route in that Hiro is absolutely essential to the plot. Without Hiro, everyone else would be completely helpless or dead. Hiro’s Evoke power allows him to awaken Blood Arts in other people and Blood Arts are necessary to overcome the new Psion-type Aragami’s plot armor, so without Hiro, a single Psion could just show up and destroy the entire Far East with impunity. Hiro becomes Captain of Blood because he’s just straight-up essential to the team. The game constantly reminds you that you’re special and above everyone else. Hiro can equip a Link Support device and go into battle, something nobody else can do. Hiro can use Blood Rage, which nobody else can do except in the ending, but even then they can only do that because Hiro’s there. And speaking of the ending, Hiro’s the only one who can break out of Rachel’s spike things and he inflicts the killing blow bare-handedly. Contrast that to Resurrection’s ending, where Yuu gives orders to the First Unit and they take down the Arius Nova together. Yuu delivers the finishing blow as you would expect (with his God Arc), which he can do only because Lindow and Soma flank the enemy and Alisa, Kota, and Sakuya provide cover fire. It annoys me and takes me out of a game when it continually tells me that my avatar in-game is just straight-up better than everyone else. I had the same problem with Persona 4, which is arguably even more egregious compared to Rage Burst in this regard. Anyway…I’ll put up my review of Rage Burst soon-ish. The above isn’t unique to Rage Burst, so it didn’t affect my score too much, but I thought it worth talking about, so I wrote it here rather than there. |
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